The following is a list of chancellors, principals, and noted alumni and professors of McGill University in Montreal , Quebec , Canada .
Noted alumni and professors
Nobel Prize graduates and faculty members
The count of Nobel laureates affiliated with McGill is sometimes incorrectly elevated to thirteen as Mohan Munasinghe , an alumnus of McGill, was a Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the former Vice President of the United States Al Gore .
Academy Award graduates
Name
Affiliation at McGill
Academy Award
Year
Torill Kove
Alumnus
Best Animated Short Film
2006
Edward Saxon
Alumnus
Best Picture
1991
Jake Eberts
Alumnus
Best Picture
1990
John Weldon
Alumnus
Best Animated Short Film
1978
Beverly Shaffer
Alumnus
Best Live Action Short Film
1977
Burt Bacharach
Alumnus
Best Original Song
1969, 1981
Best Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical)
1969
Pulitzer Prize graduates
Academics and scholars
Selim Akl — unconventional computer scientist
Ismail al-Faruqi — Muslim philosopher and comparative religion scholar
Alia Al-Saji — professor of philosophy
Antony Alcock — involved in the negotiations leading up to the Belfast Agreement
Brian Alters — evolution and education
Frederick Andermann — neuroscientist
Athanasios Asimakopulos — prominent economist in the Post Keynesian tradition
Brigitte Askonas — British immunologist
Francis Aveling — Canadian psychologist and Roman Catholic priest
Sir David Baulcombe , FRS — British plant scientist and geneticist; post-doctoral fellow at McGill 1977-1978; now Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge
Eric Berne — psychiatrist, originator of the psychoanalytic theory of transactional analysis
Raoul Bott — Wolf Prize in Mathematics , 2000
Reuven Brenner — economist; current faculty member
Ayşe Buğra — economist
Gerald Bull — former professor of mechanical engineering; expert on projectiles; designer of the Iraqi Project Babylon
Mario Bunge — physicist and philosopher
Ron Burnett — President and Vice-Chancellor, Emily Carr University of Art and Design; former Director of the Graduate Program in Communications, McGill University
Anne Carson — thinker, writer, translator, and University of Michigan classics professor
Donald Ewen Cameron — psychiatrist, involved with mind control experimentation at McGill.
Thomas Chang — developed world's first artificial cell
Margaret Ridley Charlton — one of the founders of the Medical Library Association
Usman W. Chohan — president of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots; macroeconomist
Thomas H. Clark — namesake of the mineral Thomasclarkite
Robert W. Cox (BA 1946) — former United Nations official; a leading authority of the British school of International Political Economy ; former professor of political science at Columbia University ; current professor emeritus at York University
R. F. Patrick Cronin — cardiologist; Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGill (1972–1977); healthcare consultant
Philip J. Currie — paleontologist and former curator of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
Roger Daley — meteorologist
Armand de Mestral — professor of international law
Carrie Derick — first woman to become a professor in Canada (in botany at McGill)
Arti Dhand — associate professor at the University of Toronto , Department for the Study of Religion[6]
Charles R. Drew — physician and professor
Hamid Etemad — professor of international business ; business guru and researcher
Ariel Fenster — chemistry professor who has appeared on the Discovery Channel TV show What's That All About?
Edgar Garcia-Rill (PhD 1973) — Founder of the Center for Translational Neuroscience.
James E. Gill (BSc 1921) — geology professor who introduced the Master's of Applied Science in Mineral Exploration program and established an analytical laboratory for the application of geochemistry to mineral exploration
Gilbert Girdwood — professor of chemistry; radiologist
John Harnad — physicist; CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics
Stevan Harnad — Canada Research Chair, Cognitive Sciences; open access activist
S. I. Hayakawa — linguist, U.S. senator, former president of San Francisco State University
Donald Olding Hebb — father of cognitive psychobiology; pioneer in artificial intelligence ; developed concept of Hebbian learning
John Hemming — explorer
Alma Howard — radiobiologist
Herbert Jasper — neuroscientist
Julian Jaynes — psychologist, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
George Karpati — neuroscientist
Victoria Kaspi — astrophysicist researching neutron stars and pulsars
Roger Keesing — anthropologist
Howard Atwood Kelly — member of the faculty of medicine at McGill; one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital , credited with establishing gynecology as a true specialty
Raymond Klibansky — philosopher
Harold Laski — political theorist
Charles Philippe Leblond — pioneer of stem cells, inventor of autoradiography
Daniel Levitin — cognitive psychologist
Pericles Lewis — founding President of Yale-NUS College ; former professor of English and comparative literature at Yale University
Abraham S. Luchins — American psychologist known for his research on mental sets (Einstellung effect)
Colin MacLeod — Canadian-American geneticist; discovered DNA breakthroughs
James Mallory — for many years Canada's leading constitutional scholar
Joseph Boyd Martin — former Dean of the Harvard Medical School ; former Dean and Chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco ;[7] former chair of neurology and neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute
Ronald Melzack — developed the McGill Pain Questionnaire
John S. Meyer — physician
Brenda Milner — provided the first clear demonstration of the existence of multiple memory systems in the brain with patient H.M.
Henry Mintzberg — business guru
Albert Moll — professor of psychiatry; pioneer of psychiatric day treatment
E.R. Ward Neale — geologist, professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland [8]
Percy Erskine Nobbs — former professor of architecture; designer of many buildings in Montreal, especially at McGill, and in Alberta, British Columbia, and South Africa
James Olds — neuroscientist and psychologist; co-discovered the reward center of the brain; a founder of modern neuroscience
Santa J. Ono — immunologist; 15th President & Vice-Chancellor of The University of British Columbia ; 28th President of The University of Cincinnati ; discovered NFX1 RING Finger motif; showed HMGA2 truncation drives mesenchymal tumor development
William Osler (medicine 1872) — McGill professor; medical pioneer; developed the modern form of a doctor's bedside manner; a founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University
Bhikhu Parekh, Baron Parekh — political philosopher, currently at the London School of Economics
Arthur Lindo Patterson — physicist
Wilder Penfield — neurosurgery pioneer; first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Montreal Neurological Hospital, which are affiliated with McGill University
Steven Pinker — cognitive psychologist; author of The Blank Slate , How the Mind Works
Susan Pinker — psychologist; author of The Sexual Paradox
Judah Hirsch Quastel — biochemist; pioneer in neurochemistry and soil metabolism; Director of the McGill University-Montreal General Hospital Research Institute
Fazlur Rahman — Islamic studies
James R. Reid — president of College of Montana (1889-1893) and Montana State University (1894-1904)[9]
Richard Birdsall Rogers — civil engineer and designer of the Peterborough Lift Lock
Christopher E. Rudd — immunologist; professor at Harvard and Cambridge
Witold Rybczynski — Scottish-born McGill-trained architect and internationally known writer and critic
Philip Carl Salzman — anthropologist
Joseph A. Schwarcz — chemist, science popularizer, science journalist
Justine Sergent — neuroscientist
Bernard Shapiro — Ethics Commissioner of Canada; former Principal of McGill and Deputy Education Minister of Ontario; twin brother of Harold Shapiro
Harold Shapiro — former president of Princeton University ; former president of the University of Michigan ; twin brother of Bernard Shapiro
Stephen Alexander Smith — legal scholar and writer
Charles Taylor — writer, philosopher, and political theorist; 2007 winner of the Templeton Prize
Marc Tessier-Lavigne — current president of Rockefeller University; Rhodes scholar; 11th president of Stanford University starting Sept 2016
Dale C. Thomson — Vice-Principal (1973–1976); Professor of Political Science (1973–1994)
Lionel Tiger — best-selling author; Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University
Peter Todd , former dean of McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management , dean of HEC Paris [10]
Bruce Trigger — anthropologist
Tom Velk — monetary economics and public policy professor
Jacob Viner — professor; early leader of the Chicago school of economics
Immanuel Wallerstein — former professor of sociology (1971–1976);[11] political scientist, known for the World Systems Theory
Jagannath Wani — statistics professor and philanthropist focusing on mental illness awareness
Franklin White — scholar-practitioner; former President, Canadian Public Health Association; 1997 Medal of Honor from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO)
Lydia White — linguist
Tim Wu — professor at Columbia Law School ; adviser for the New York State Attorney General
Louis Nirenberg — mathematician; winner of 2015 Abel Prize
David A. Freedman — statistician; professor at University of California, Berkeley
Business and media
Suhayya Abu-Hakima — Co-founder and CEO of AmikaNow! and Amika Mobile Corporation[12]
Vinod Agarwal — founder and former chairman of LogicVision ($100 million NASDAQ traded company)
Suroosh Alvi — journalist, filmmaker, and co-founder of VICE magazine
Aldo Bensadoun — founder and CEO of the ALDO Group
Conrad Black — imprisoned press baron and media tycoon in the Anglo-Canadian tradition of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Thomson of Fleet; owner of 650 dailies/weeklies around the world[13]
Gad Elmaleh — French comedian.
Charles Bronfman — philanthropist; former Co-Chairman of Seagram Distillers [14]
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. — former CEO of Seagram[15]
John Cleghorn — former chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada , the largest bank in Canada; currently chairman of SNC-Lavalin group[16]
Jean Coutu — businessman; billionaire; founder and CEO of Jean Coutu Group
Paul Desmarais, Jr. — Chairman of Power Corporation [17]
Darren Entwistle — president and chief executive officer of Telus
Adam Gopnik — staff writer for The New Yorker magazine
Kuok Khoon Hong — Singaporean billionaire and co-founder of Wilmar International
Dick Irvin, Jr. — sports broadcaster and author; second longest serving member of CBC 's Hockey Night in Canada (after Bob Cole )
Hubert Lacroix — President and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
David Lawee — partner and founder of Google Capital
John MacBain — founder, CEO and President of Trader Classified Media
Shahid Mahmood — Political cartoonist
Thomas S. Monahan — President and CEO of CIBC Mellon
Claude Mongeau — CEO and President of the Canadian National Railway
Andy Nulman — co-founder of Just for Laughs
Mark Phillips — CBS News London bureau correspondent since 1982, formerly CBC News London correspondent
Elizabeth Plank — Vox video blogger and online journalist
Jade Raymond — video game producer at Ubisoft ; co-host of G4TV's Electronic Playground
Matthew Rosenberg — Washington correspondent at The New York Times , and national security analyst for CNN
John Roth — former CEO of Nortel Networks
Calin Rovinescu — President and CEO of Air Canada
Seymour Schulich — benefactor to the Schulich School of Music at McGill and Schulich School of Business , York University
Allan Scott — writer-producer of more than 20 feature films, including Don't Look Now , voted the best British film of all time; wrote Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ; as chairman of Macallan-Glenlivet, he turned Macallan into a world-leading malt whisky
Savik Shuster — TV journalist working for Ukrainian television
Evan Solomon — political journalist and radio host on Sirius XM Canada , columnist for Maclean's
Helga Stephenson — interim CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television
Ziya Tong — television personality and co-host of Daily Planet
Lorne Trottier — founder of Matrox Electronic Systems
Ivana Trump — Czech-American businesswoman and former fashion model , ex-wife of President Donald Trump
Les Vadasz — founding member of Intel Corporation
Zain Verjee — co-anchor of CNN International's European morning program World Report
Moses Znaimer — co-founder and former President and Executive Producer of CityTV; Chairman and Executive Producer of the Access Media Group
Mort Zuckerman — CEO of Atlantic Monthly Corporation and publisher of U.S. News & World Report
Scott McDonald — CEO of Oliver Wyman
Robert Rabinovitch — President and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Harley Morenstein — Host and co-creator of Epic Meal Time
Politics and government
Canadian politicians and civil servants
McGill alumni have held and continue to hold many positions at the federal and provincial levels in Canadian politics:
Governors General of Canada
Prime Ministers
Cabinet Ministers
Chris Alexander (BA 1989) — Minister of Citizenship and Immigration , 2013-2015; previously Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan, 2003-2005
Warren Allmand (BCL 1952) — served variously as Solicitor General , Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development , and Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs between 1972 and 1979
Steven Blaney (Cert Mgmt 1991) — Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness , 2013-2015
Jim Carr (BA 1979) — Minister of Natural Resources , 2015-
Brooke Claxton (BCL) — Minister of Health, 1943-1946; Minister of National Defence , 1946-1954
Irwin Cotler (BA 1961, BCL 1964) — Minister of Justice and Attorney General , 2003-2006
Charles Doherty (BCL 1876, Hon. LLD 1913) — Minister of Justice and Attorney General, 1911-1921
Charles Drury (BCL) — Minister of Finance, Defence, Public Works, Industry, President of the Treasury Board
Sydney Arthur Fisher — Minister of Agriculture , 1896-1911
Karina Gould (BA 2010) — Minister of Democratic Institutions, 2017–present
Herb Gray (BCom 1952) — Deputy Prime Minister of Canada , 1997-2002
Cyrus Macmillan (BA 1900, MA 1903) — Minister of Fisheries, 1930
John McCallum (PhD 1977) — Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada since 2015; former Dean of the Faculty of Arts of McGill University
Catherine McKenna (LLB 1999) — Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, 2015-
Frederick Debartzch Monk (BCL 1877) — Minister of Public Works, 1911-1912
Joe Oliver (BA 1961, BCL 1964) — Minister of Finance, 2014-2015
Jim Peterson (DCL) — Minister of International Trade , 2003-2006
Greg Rickford (BCL/LLB 2005) — Minister of Natural Resources, 2014-2015
Supreme Court Justices
Douglas Abbott (BCL 1918) — appointed to the Court in 1954, previously Minister of National Defence and Minister of Finance[19]
Ian Binnie (BA 1960) — appointed to the Court in 1998, formerly Associate Deputy Minister of Justice[18]
Louis-Philippe de Grandpré (BCL 1938) — appointed to the Court in 1974, formerly president of the Canadian Bar Association[20]
Marie Deschamps (LLM 1983) — appointed to the Court in 2002, previously a Judge on the Quebec Court of Appeal[18]
Morris Fish (BA 1959, BCL 1962) — appointed to the Court in 2003, previously a Judge on the Quebec Court of Appeal[18]
Clément Gascon (BCL 1981) — appointed to the Court in 2014, previously a Judge on the Quebec Court of Appeal
Désiré Girouard (BCL 1860) — appointed to the Court in 1895, previously member of Parliament[21]
Charles Gonthier (BCL 1951) — served on the Supreme Court 1989-2003[18]
Gerald Le Dain (BCL 1949) — appointed to the Court in 1984, previously a Judge on the Federal Court of Appeal[22]
Pierre-Basile Mignault (BCL 1878) — appointed to the Court in 1918, previously President of the Bar of Montréal[23]
Thibaudeau Rinfret (BCL 1900) — appointed to the Court in 1924, previously a Judge on the Superior Court of Quebec[24]
Senators
Auditors General
Others
Sir Charles Boucher de Boucherville (MD 1843) — Premier of Quebec, 1874-1878, 1891-1892
Ian Brodie (BA 1990) — Chief of Staff in the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper , 2006-2008
Neil Brown , Q.C. (Ph.D. 1973) — Alberta MLA
Rosemary Brown — first Black Canadian woman to be elected to a provincial legislature
Gerald Butts (BA 1993, MA 1996) — Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada , 2015-
May Cutler (BA, MA) — first woman to serve as Mayor of Westmount, Quebec (1987-1991); founder of Tundra Books ; first female Canadian publisher of children's books[25]
Mark Heyck — current Mayor of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Sir Charles Peers Davidson (BA 1864, MA 1867, BCL 1873, DCL 1875, Hon. LLD 1912) — Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court, 1912-1915
Henry Thomas Duffy (BA 1876, BCL 1879) — Minister of Public Works and Treasurer of Quebec
Brian Gallant (LLM 2011) — Premier of New Brunswick , 2014-
R. A. E. Greenshields (BA 1883, BCL 1885) — Chief Justice of the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec , 1929-1942
Anthony Housefather (born 1971) – Member of Parliament
Don Johnston — former Secretary General of the OECD
Jack Layton (BA 1969) — former leader of the New Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition
Carlos Leitão (BA 1979) — Minister of Finance of Quebec , 2014-
David Lewis (BA and LLD) — Rhodes Scholar and former leader of the New Democratic Party (1971–75)
Alan Macnaughton — former MP and Speaker of the House of CommonsThomas d'Arcy McGee (BCL 1861) — a father of the Canadian Confederation[18]
Thomas Mulcair — current head of the New Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition
Alexander Cameron Rutherford (BA, LLB 1881) —first Premier of Alberta, founder of the University of Alberta
Bernard Shapiro (BA 1956) — Federal Ethics Commissioner, 2004-2007
Marie-Claire Kirkland Strover — first woman elected to the Quebec National Assembly, serving between 1966 and 1973.
The "McGill 5" — five then-current McGill students who were elected as NDP MPs in 2011 :
James Campbell Clouston - Canadian officer in the British Royal Navy , who acted as pier-master during the Dunkirk evacuation ; inspiration for Kenneth Branagh 's pier-master character in Christopher Nolan 's 2017 film Dunkirk
Foreign politicians and civil servants
Heads of State
Others
S. I. Hayakawa — U.S. Senator from California
Zbigniew Brzezinski — former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter
Miguel Castilla (BA Economics) — incumbent Minister of Economy and Finance of Peru
Gilbert Cooper — former mayor of Hamilton, Bermuda and member of the House of Assembly of Bermuda
Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon — former member of the London County Council , Chairman of the Fabian Society , 1960-1961
Andrew Hamilton Gault — Conservative Member of Parliament for Taunton , Somerset , UK (1924-1935); raised Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry , the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire ; bequeathed his Mont Saint-Hilaire estate to McGill in 1958
David Hackett — boarding school friend of Robert F. Kennedy ; organizational father of Lyndon B. Johnson 's 1964 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA ), the domestic U.S. Peace Corps program; inspiration for Phineas in John Knowles's 1959 novel A Separate Peace ; McGill hockey player and selected for the US Olympic Hockey Team (1952)
Euan Howard, 4th Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal — British Minister of State for Defence, 1979-1981
Jamaluddin Jarjis — former Malaysian ambassador to the United States, former Malaysian government minister
Joanne Liu — International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
Joni Madraiwiwi (DipA&SL 1988, LLM 1989) — Vice-President of Fiji, 2004-2006
Ilya Sheyman (BA 2006) — Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2012 election
Gordon Wasserman, Baron Wasserman — British policing advisor and life peer
Morag Wise, Lady Wise (LLM) — Scottish Senator of the College of Justice
Dov Yosef — Israeli politician
Art, music, and film
Ayal Adler — musician and composer
Will Aitken — novelist and film critic
Patrick Allen — English actor and businessman, known for Shakespearean roles and for narrating the controversial Protect and Survive public information films for the British government
Michael Andre — poet and editor
Hadji Bakara — "sound manipulator" and secondary keyboardist for Wolf Parade
Samantha Bee — correspondent, The Daily Show
Yanic Bercier — drummer for death metal band Quo Vadis
Claire Boucher — musician and visual artist under stage name Grimes
Win Butler — musician, co-founder of Arcade Fire
Peter Butterfield — concert tenor and conductor
Anne Carson — poet and professor of classics
Regine Chassagne — musician, co-founder of Arcade Fire
Leonard Cohen — poet, author, songwriter, singer, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee
Sheldon Cohen — animator and illustrator of The Hockey Sweater
Chuck Comeau — drummer and songwriter for band Simple Plan
Hume Cronyn — actor, The Seventh Cross , Cocoon ; studied theatre, left for Broadway without completing his degree
Hubert Davis (BA 2000) — Oscar nominee for best documentary short subject
Audrey Capel Doray — artist
Christopher Downs — actor and Entertainer in Taiwan and China , known there as 夏克立
William Henry Drummond — Irish-born Canadian poet
Louis Dudek — poet
Arthur Erickson — architect (Robson Square, Vancouver; Canadian Chancery, Washington DC; Roy Thomson Hall; Museum of Anthropology, UBC; Simon Fraser University; Museum of Glass, Tacoma; California Plaza, San Diego Convention Center)
Mary Fahl — singer and actress
Colin Ferguson — actor, Eureka
Karl Fischer — architect practicing in Montreal and New York City
Jessalyn Gilsig — actress, Boston Public , NYPD Blue , Nip/Tuck , Glee
Evan Goldberg — co-writer of Superbad , Pineapple Express
Jonathan Goldstein — author and radio producer, host of WireTap on CBC Radio One
Chilly Gonzales — Grammy-nominated musician
Linda Griffiths — playwright, actress
Aaron Harris — percussionist/drummer, of Islands , Montreal-based indie rock group
Sinjin Hawke — music producer and DJ
Gavin Heffernan — director, Expiration
Jennifer Irwin — actress, Still Standing
Heather Juergensen — actress, co-screenwriter Kissing Jessica Stein
Maxwell M. Kalman — architect, designed Canada's first mall Norgate shopping centre [26]
George Karpati
Kid Koala , born Eric San — turntablist and musician
Mia Kirshner — actress, The L Word
Veronika Krausas — composer
Christian Lander — author of the Stuff White People Like blog
Robert Lantos — film producer
Irving Layton — poet
Stephen Leacock — humorist and economist
Rachelle Lefevre — actress, Big Wolf on Campus , Twilight
Daniel Levitin — writer, This Is Your Brain On Music ; musician
Julia Loktev — director of The Loneliest Planet , Day Night Day Night
Brian Macdonald — choreographer and dancer in Canada, New York, and Europe
Hugh MacLennan — writer, Two Solitudes , Barometer Rising
Shahid Mahmood — editorial cartoonist
Miles Mander — early film actor, director and novelist
Ruth Marshall — actress who played in Flashpoint as the SRU 's forensic psychologist
Cameron Mathison — actor, All My Children
Marc Mayer — art curator and director of the National Gallery of Canada [27]
Harry Mayerovitch — artist
John McCrae — surgeon, poet, author of Canadian poem "In Flanders' Fields "
Kate McGarrigle — musician and folk-singer
Casey McKinnon — actress
Sophia Michahelles — pageant puppet designer and co-artistic director, Processional Arts Workshop
Raymond Moriyama — architect (Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto; Canadian Embassy, Tokyo; Ontario Science Centre; Toronto Reference Library; Canadian War Museum; Saudi Arabian National Museum, Riyadh)
Tomas Mureika — filmmaker, playwright, music critic
Suniti Namjoshi — writer
Donald Patriquin — composer and organist
Mauro Pezzente — bassist and co-founder of Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Sam Roberts — musician
John Rogers — writer/producer, Leverage
Rebecca Rosenblum — writer, winner of the 2007 Metcalf-Rooke Award
Dean Rosenthal — composer [28]
Moshe Safdie — architect (National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Library, Salt Lake City Public Library, Musee de la Civilisation, Habitat '67)
Robert Edison Sandiford — short story writer and essayist
John Ralston Saul — Governor-General's-Award-winning philosophical author
Robert William Service — poet and writer of the Yukon Gold Rush
Mark Shainblum — author and comic book creator
William Shatner — actor, 'Boston Legal ; Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek
Jaspreet Singh — author, Seventeen Tomatoes
Sonja Skarstedt — poet and illustrator
Donald Steven — Juno Award and Jules Léger Prize winning composer
Philippe Tatartcheff — Swiss-born poet and songwriter notable for writing songs in French with Anna and Kate McGarrigle
Ruth Taylor — poet
Gentile Tondino — artist
J. Torres — comic book writer
Jessica Trisko — 2007 Miss Earth titleholder
Ken Vandermark — jazz saxophonist and MacArthur Foundation "genius award" winner
Rufus Wainwright (briefly attended — dropped out upon record deal) — recording artist, musician
William Weintraub — author, journalist and filmmaker (Why Rock the Boat? )
Robert Stanley Weir — author (in 1908) of the English words to "O, Canada"
Matthew White — countertenor[29]
Jan Wong — Globe and Mail columnist ("Lunch with Jan Wong" series); author of books including award-winning Red China Blues and Jan Wong's China
Royal Wood — singer/songwriter
Mackenzie Davis — actress and Canadian Screen Award nominee for The F Word
Inventors
Sports
Betty Archdale — former captain (1934/5) of English women's cricket team
Mike Babcock — NHL Coach, currently of the Toronto Maple Leafs , First and as of 2016 only coach to be a member of the Triple Gold Club having won the Stanley Cup (Detroit, 2008), Olympic Gold Medal for Men's Hockey (2010, 2014), and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Ice Hockey World Championship
Russ Blinco — Montreal Maroons centre; 1935 NHL Rookie of the Year
Guy Boucher — head coach of the Ottawa Senators
George Burnett — former head coach for the Edmonton Oilers
Doug Carpenter — former head coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils
Randy Chevrier — former NFL and CFL player
Ken Dryden (LLB 1974) — politician, lawyer, businessman, author; retired National Hockey League goaltender from the Montreal Canadiens ; former President of the Toronto Maple Leafs
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif — American football player for the Kansas City Chiefs
Phil Edwards (MD 1936) — one of Canada's most decorated Olympians with 5 bronze medals
Jack Gelineau — Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks goaltender who won Calder Trophy as NHL Rookie of the Year in 1950
Jennifer Heil (BComm ) — 2006 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle skiing
George Hodgson (BEng 1916) — Canadian Olympic men's swim team (1912 and 1920); McGill's first athlete to win an Olympic gold medal; first Canadian to win two Olympic gold medals (Stockholm, 1916)
Jackrabbit Johannsen — Norwegian-Canadian; credited with introducing cross-country skiing to North America; lived in retirement at McGill's Mont-Saint-Hilaire Gault Nature Reserve
Charline Labonté (BEd - Physical Education) — 2006 Olympic gold medalist in women's ice hockey
R. Tait McKenzie — pioneer in college physical education; sculptor; physician
Kevin O'Neill — former head coach of the Toronto Raptors ; current head coach of the USC Trojans
Frank Patrick (BA 1908) — wrote much of the NHL rule book
Hon. Sydney David Pierce (BA 1922, BCL 1925, LLD 1956) — 1924 Olympic swimmer and former Canadian ambassador to many countries
Richard "Dick" Pound — former Olympic swimmer, former IOC vice president, chancellor of McGill, current chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
Samantha Rapoport — NFL Director of Player Development, former Canada women's national football team and Montreal Blitz quarterback
Kim St-Pierre (BEd 2005) — Canadian Olympic women's hockey team (2002 and 2006), McGill's first female athlete to become an Olympic gold medallist (Salt Lake City, 2002)
Frank "Shag" Shaughnessy — first professional football coach hired by a Canadian university, he revolutionized Canadian college football by introducing the forward pass in 1921 in a game against Syracuse University and lobbied for a decade until the forward pass was adopted by the Canadian Rugby Football Union in 1931
Jack Wright (MDCM 1928) — eleven-year veteran of Canadian Davis Cup team in 1920s and 1930s
David Zilberman — Canadian Olympic heavyweight wrestler
Fictional characters
Major Donald Craig, Canadian commando serving with British special forces during World War II, portrayed by Rock Hudson in the 1967 war movie Tobruk . Though the film was loosely based on real events, it's not clear whether or not Hudson's character was based on a real person. Most likely he was a pastiche character, given a Canadian background as cover for Hudson's inability to emulate a British accent.
Dr. Walter Langkowski, researcher from the Marvel Comics Canadian superhero series Alpha Flight ; portrayed as a McGill-based biophysicist researching the gamma radiation accident which created the Hulk; his discoveries transformed him into the superhero known as Sasquatch
Lieutenant Alan McGregor, played by Gary Cooper , Lives Of the Bengal Lancers (1935)
Dr. James Wilson , oncologist and best friend to main character Gregory House in the Fox Network TV drama House
Others
Norman Bethune — as "Bai Qiu'en", subject of essay "In Memory of Norman Bethune" (Jinian Bai Qiu'en) by Mao Zedong ; medical professor; became Red Army’s Medical Chief and trained thousands of Chinese as medics and doctors; died in 1939 (from blood poisoning) during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Frank E. Buck — horticulturalist
Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll — Scottish peer and landowner
Chi-Ming Chow — cardiologist and board member of the Heart and Stroke Foundation
Lawrence Moore Cosgrave — Canadian signer of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender
Thomas Neill Cream — Glasgow -born serial killer of the 1800s, thought by some to have been Jack the Ripper
Rocco Galati — constitutional lawyer; challenged Justice Marc Nadon's appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada
Charles Goren — world champion bridge player and bestselling author
Bertha Hosang Mah , first Chinese woman to graduate from a Canadian university (McGill 1917)
John Peters Humphrey — author of the first draft of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Arnold Johnson — performed the first cardiac heart catheterization procedure in Canada in 1946
Annie MacDonald Langstaff — in 1914 became McGill's and Quebec 's first female law graduate but was not admitted to the Quebec bar until 2006 (posthumously); the Quebec bar did not admit women until 1941, at which time Langstaff felt she was too old to join
Neville Maxwell — British journalist; author of notable book on the Sino-Indian War
Elizabeth C. Monk (BA 1919, BCL 1923, LLD 1975) — first woman admitted to the Quebec bar in 1942
Nancy Morris — first female rabbi in Scotland
Madeleine Parent , Canadian labour, feminist and aboriginal rights activist
Julie Payette — astronaut
Autumn Phillips — wife of Peter Phillips, who is 11th in line for the British throne
André Robert — father of the Canadian numerical weather prediction models
Francis Scrimger (BA 1901, MDCM 1905) — Victoria Cross winner, 1915; Professor of Surgery and Chief of Surgery at the Children's Memorial Hospital
Harmeet Singh Sooden — peace activist once held captive in Iraq
Robert Thirsk — astronaut
Dafydd Williams — astronaut
Victor Dzau (MD) — President of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences
Zohaib Asad Syed (BA 2015 Double Majors) — first student in the world at McGill with a world record number of 28 A grades in international O/IGCSE level exams along with University of Cambridge Top in the Region awards in O level Human and Social Biology, AS level General Paper, and was awarded with a cash prize of 1 million PKR by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Yousaf Raza Gillani, and was also recognized and applauded by the principal and vice chancellor of McGill university Heather Munroe Blum in 2012.[30] [31]